We’re launching a biomaterials focus group.

The past decade of biomaterials research has reached a convergence point. Materials are no longer inert and static. They are becoming biologically integrated, adaptive, and active smart materials that can be engineered using biological processes.

As two synthetic biologists (or engineering biologists), we are aware of our technical limitations on biomaterial design: biological, biochemical, and material feasibilities, multidimensional parameter spaces, reproducibility challenges, scalability constraints, and high costs. At the same time while the promise of these systems is significant, we need have humility and solidarity and not overstate potential with inflated language. We believe this is the right time to create a physical space where these tensions can be addressed and examined together by uniting disciplines that rarely interact but overlap so we can break down assumptions collectively.

We also believe that people are the core catalysts of progress. Large language models can help surface patterns, summarise knowledge, and suggest possible connections, but they cannot replace the situated judgement, trust, and critical exchange required to shape new ideas. Many of the most important challenges in biomaterials are not simply technical, but interdisciplinary and under-articulated. They sit in the gaps between fields, and are often sustained by the lack of open discussion around failure. We believe these shared bottlenecks should be identified and tackled through open and safe dialogue.

That’s our premise for our biomaterials group. To bring researchers together working at the edge of innovative biomaterials, however they choose to define it, to ask what is happening, what is missing, and what should come next? Reaching the limits of one’s thinking is uncomfortable but conceptually it’s where new fields arise.

— Ivy Li + Içvara Aor